MORNINGS

Mornings, I wake with a drop of grief
under the tongue, so dense I could gulp once
and drink it down at breakfast, but what

I want is tears, to rinse you in them, you
who are thinking free and gentle thoughts of me
in someone else’s bed. I smooth and fold

yesterday’s clothes in drawers, and mouth
your two names, and the coarse and tender words
that give me you, embodied, but there’s no

weeping till evening. One tilt of the head,
then, and they come as painlessly as any clean
unnecessary water, the wastes of the day.

Rosemary Norman